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How to beat Zeromus immediately after beating Judge Borgen.

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2024-01-12 10:14:25

Preparation H - Part One: The Cute One.

You're going to need to acquire a few things to trample Zeromus:

1: Hi-Potions. Don't even bother if you don't have at least 50 of these. Having a full set of 99 is certainly recommended. You should be able to buy them from any shop after beating Borgen.

2: Dispel Motes. I went in with 30 of them and used 17. Steal these from the Wild Onions in the Paramina Rift. These are probably the most useful item for beating this Esper.

3: Shades of Black Technick. Shades of Black is a Technick that you should have found in Raithwall's Tomb which casts a random Black Magic spell for 0 MP and ignores both Silence and, more importantly, the Magic Sealing Field that this fight suffers. Why is this so important? Because Zeromus is neither immune to nor does he absorb any elemental damage and this Technick can cast all the elemental -aga spells as well as Flare. Yes, you read that correctly: This technick will cast top tier spells you haven't even acquired yet for 0 MP!

4: Shear Technick. This will reduce Zeromus's Magick Resist stat making Shades of Black even more effective. His MR starts at 33. Use Shear 5 times on Zeromus and you will have halved his Magick Resist to 15-16, use it 7 times and you'll bring it down to 10-11. That's 1/3 it's starting value. You can find Shear in the Barheim Passage once you've healed the sick person in the village with the Estersand Gate Crystal and been given the Barheim Passage Key. You'll need a Foebreaker in the party to use it. I'll cover my Job setup in the next section.

5: Demon Shields. These shields are useful since they will let you absorb Dark elemental attacks and the Dark Lords will regularly cast Darkra on the Party. You can steal these from Abysteel in the Henne Mines. Just enter the mines from the Feywood and you will find two of them. Be very careful as these two common enemies are actually far more dangerous to you at the moment than Optional Boss Zeromus and his gang of Dark Lords! Yes, I'm serious! They can quickly demolish a Lv 40 party with 4,000+ HP in about 2 attacks from each of them. If you have 3 party members that can steal and 3 Thieves cuffs then equip them and set a priority gambit to steal from the nearest visible foe and then immediately flee the area after your attempt regardless of success to heal up/revive. Repeat until you have three Demon Shields.

Huh. "Optional Boss Zeromus and The Dark Lords" sounds like the name of a Metal band...

6: Remedies. Yeah, this is a fairly useful item for the game in general, but you might end up using quite a few of these in the fight. I think I used about 27 of them in the fight.

7: Chronos Tears. These remove Stop, which is really, really useful if you don't have Remedy Lore 3.

The following items are useful but not necessary:

1: Hastega Motes. Let's you put the whole party in Haste even if you can't cast. Poach Mimeos in the Barheim Passage areas where you can find the Shear Technick. It's rare (5%) and more often than not you'll just get an Iron Ore, but these are very useful in the fight since Shades of Black has a bit of a charge time. I always like to have a few dozen of these for big fights.

2: Any non-elemental attack items. Zeromus has 50% resistance to all elemental damage.

Preparation - Part Two: The Whiny One.

Let's go over party setup, both Jobs and Gambits.

I used Vaan, Balthier and Basch for the majority of this fight that didn't involve Quickenings.

Vaan was set as a Bushi/Shikari, Balthier as a Shikari/Foebreaker, and Basch as a Knight/Bushi. Why those particular classes? Because Bushi and Shikari gain access to Shades of Black while Foebreaker can gain access to Shear. Granted, the Esper Adrammelech needs to be assigned to Balthier's Shikari board to let him get Shades of Black, but that fight is considerably easier than this one since you can cast with your mages and only have to deal with zombies and lightning attacks.

What's that? You've already set up your party differently and don't have any Bushi or Foebreakers? Well, that's fine. As of patch 1.04 you can go to Montblanc and reset your jobs, getting all your license points back.

Anyways, your going to want to have the following licenses for the team:

All of the +HP lores (1-11 for Vaan/Basch - 785 LP, 1-9 for Balthier - 540 LP)

All Potion Lores (20, 35, and 70 LP), all 3 Remedy Lores for Vaan and Balthier (20, 30, and 70 LP)

All Magick Lores (550LP for Vaan/Basch, 170 LP for Balthier)

At least 4 more Gambits (min. 90 LP)

All Swiftness lores (30, 50, and 80 LP)

Shades of Black Technick (40 LP)

Shear Technick (50 LP)

Shields 6 (for Demon Shield - 40 LP)

Daggers 3 (for Main Gauche - 35 LP)

Heavy Armor 4 (for Shielded Armor - 40 LP)

Mystic Armor 5 (for Lamia's Tiara - 30 LP)

Accessories 5 (for Tourmaline Ring - 35 LP; Vaan can ignore this)

The license for whatever your best non-elemental one-handed Sword is for Basch

The Adrammelech Esper (25 LP) for Balthier.

Additionally, you want every character to have all their Quickenings (min. 225 LP).

That's a minimum of 2,040 LP for Vaan and you'll also need the licenses that lead to the licenses I've listed here. That's a lot of LP to earn, which is where the over-leveled aspect of the guide becomes obvious. Again, if you built your party in a different direction you can reset your Jobs/Licenses by talking to Montblanc so you can choose new Jobs and refund all your spent LP, and you should have at least one Golden Amulet (Accessories 6 - ) if you need more LP.

Why Accessories 5? For the Tourmaline Ring, which halves Ice Damage. The Dark Lords commonly attack with Ice, Fire, Dark, and physical attacks. We can absorb Dark, can halve Ice and Physical, and just have to tank Fire damage. Vaan can equip a Lamia's Tiara instead which can allow him to use some other accessory.

You'll also want your party to be at Lv 40 so that the team will have @4,000 HP. Balthier will be just under, Basch a bit over, and Vaan way the heck over.

For gambit setup your going to want the following:

Ally: Any - Phoenix Down

Ally: HP < 80% - Hi-Potion

Ally: Any - Hastega Mote

Ally: Any - Remedy OR Ally: Any - Chronos Tear

Foe: Highest Max HP - Dispel Mote

Foe: Undead - Hi-Potion OR Foe: Undead - Attack

Foe: Hightest Max HP - Shades of Black

Ally: Any - Phoenix Down and Ally: HP < 80% - Hi-Potion should be self-explanatory.

Ally: Any - Hastega Mote is above Ally: Any - Remedy because it counters Slow by giving the Party Haste. Remedy with Remedy Lore 3 will remove Stop and Vaan and Balthier both have access to Remedy Lore 3, while Basch only gets Remedy Lore 2, so he has to use Chronos Tear instead

Foe: Undead - Hi-Potion will target the Dark Lords that spawn, and with all 3 Potion Lores you should be doing nearly 1000 damage with each Hi-Potion. If Basch has a good enough sword that will do more than 1K damage to the Dark Lords then he should be using Foe: Undead - Attack instead since he combos often.

Foe: Highest Max HP - Dispel Mote will remove the buffs that Zeromus starts with, as well as any buffs he happens to cast. I've seen this one prevent him from ever using Big Bang because he kept casting Hastega.

Foe: Highest Max HP - Shades of Black is the big damage dealer at this point unless you've somehow managed to get your hands on an upper tier sword. With this technick you've got even odds of hitting him with a high level spell like Flare or the Elemental -aga spells as you do with a low level spell of Fire.

Preparation - Part 3: The Emo One.

Final prep for the fight is ensuring that all six of your characters have three full mist gauges. Shouldn't be too hard considering there's a Gate Crystal one room over from the pedestal you use to get to the boss...

The Fight

Strut into the room like you own it. Attitude is an important part of any battle, and you want that Esper to know you're coming for him. Have Balthier hit him with Shear 7 times in a row. By the time this is done the Dark Lords should be relatively under control, Zeromus should be devoid of any buffs, your party should be twitching due to all the Speed they've snorted Hastega motes. It's time to start some real damage dealing. Start a Quickening chain. If you aren't familiar with Quickening chains, you can find some videos on YouTube for how to do a massive Quickening chain. With any luck you can manage to get 3 or 4 chains of 15 to 20 Quickenings. If you're really lucky you might actually kill Zeromus at this point with chains of 25 to 30 Quickenings. Once your out of Mist Charges just switch your party back to Vaan, Balthier, and Basch and finish the battle normally.

Source: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2556379717

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